---
title: 'Keep it, to be sure!' replied the old woman briskly. ' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'Keep it, to be sure!' replied the old woman briskly. ' A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/9/63/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 9, sentence 63

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'Keep it, to be sure!' replied the old woman briskly. '

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**What happens:** keep, be, reply · **To what, where:** purr, old woman · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3027:9:63
# text = 'Keep it, to be sure!' replied the old woman briskly. '
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
6	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	cop	_	_
7	sure	sure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
10	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	briskly	briskly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
16	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **keep** | infinitive |  | purr |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | sure *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past |  | the old woman |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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